A Truer Shade Of Green

Kermit got it wrong. It’s plenty easy to be “green,” these days. Everyone from house builders to hotel chains claim they are treading a little lighter on Mother Earth. Many commercial operations, I’m sure, are truly concerned and virtuous, but saying you’re green is effortless; being green takes a little sweat. How do you tell who’s walking the walk?

A couple weeks ago, I spoke to Pete Kight about the wisdom of putting his organic certification on the labels of his wine bottles. Kight, an Atlanta resident and founder of CheckFree Corp., owns Quivira Vineyards in Sonoma County, Calif., and knows proclaiming one’s organic-ness these days is like a drop of water in a green tidal wave.

But Quivira’s organic certification is not just any certified-organic stamp. Kight and his hard-working winemaker Steven Canter have dragged Quivira through the Demeter-certified Biodynamic process, which takes a minimum of three years, but typically takes longer. The Demeter agents turn your vineyards and winery upside looking for evidence of anything (and I mean anything) that is not in the Biodynamic playbook—a hyper-organic, quasi-spiritual method of farming and winemaking. And that’s not even the hard part.

“As a grape grower, you have to say good-bye to chemicals,” says Kight, who shuttles out to the Dry Creek winery monthly while performing his duties as vice chairman of Fiserv, which purchased his electronic funds transfer company in 2007. “You have to manage all the weeds—and the other things farmers do—without chemicals, so you have to be in the vineyards every day. That takes a lot of manpower. Also, if something goes wrong like disease or infestation, you have no magic bullets in your gun. This means you have to work at preventing it from happening in the first place.”

My first question: “Was it worth it?”

“You really have to believe you’re making a better wine, if you do this,” he said with a laugh. “But we really are ‘growing’ better wines in the vineyards. You can see it in the roots. They are a foot longer than they were pre-Biodynamics.”

So how much does it cost to have vine roots that sink an extra 12 inches into Mother Earth? Kight estimates it at an extra $1 to $1.50 per bottle. The cost of Biodynamics and certification does not necessarily put Quivira at a competitive disadvantage. I tasted its 2007 sauvignon blanc next to a highly touted bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc that cost $7 more. The Quivira blew it out of the water; and I wasn’t the only one at the tasting table to make that appraisal.

Better wine. Better for the Earth. Guess that makes Quivira a darker shade of green.

2007 Quivira Vineyards, Fig Tree Vineyard,
Sauvignon Blanc, Dry Creek Valley, Calif.

• $18

• Two Thumbs Way Up

• Lots of intense tropical fruit flavors like mango, papaya and pineapple with a touch of dried apricot. Complex and refreshing, it’d be great by the pool, but better at the dinner table with roasted chicken and a mango salsa.